Witty’s Lagoon

The Victoria Home Learner’s Not-Back-to-School picnic was supposed to be Tuesday afternoon, but was postponed because of rain. However, the kids were excited about it and we’ve never been afraid of a little rain, so my friend Kyrie and I packed up the kids in the van and decided to head out to Witty’s Lagoon. Apparently there’s a beautiful waterfall there, which I didn’t know about. I think next time I’ll find out where the waterfall is and try and go there. I love waterfalls. We did know about the nature centre, but figured that at their ages the kids would appreciate a hike and the beach more. What we did see of the lagoon was beautiful, and the weather was just about perfect for a hike and some beach play. Not too hot, not too rainy, and not too cold.

I’ve never been there before. It’s a beautiful, quiet area with lots of little beaches. We chose a fairly undeveloped trail to start off with, and followed it down to a cove of sorts. There, we waded through some water to a spit. We chatted with the kids about the seaweed, barnacles, mussels, and clam shells that we saw along the way. We had been hoping to see some tide pools, but while there were a few, we didn’t see any anemones or sea stars. The tide was on the way in, which we knew we had to keep in mind when crossing the water.

The kids had fun running around on the little spit for a while. We pointed out all the tracks the sea gulls that had been there had left behind, and they got busy making their own tracks in the sand.

It wasn’t long before Kyrie noticed the tide was coming in with a vengeance, and we made our way back across to the trail we had been on. After some climbing and bush whacking (both of us with babies in carriers), we came across a beautiful little beach where we stopped for the kids to play some more.

The play mostly involved drawing with sticks in the sand, wading in the water (or sitting, in Fearghus’ case), and generally exploring the area.

Then we climbed up from there and came to a much more well-used gravel path, at the end of which was another beach, which of course resulted in more exploring, climbing on driftwood, and sand play.

Once the kids were ready to go, we headed back up the path. At the end of it was a faucet with a big bucket, presumably for dogs to drink from but of course this was a whole new game for the kids. The three kids who moments ago had been tired and wanting to go home all had a second wind as they played with the faucet for a while.

While I didn’t think postponing the VHLN picnic was at all necessary, in some ways I’m kind of glad they did as we got to explore a new area we’d never been to before. It’s nice how quiet everything is now that summer is winding down. We did go to the picnic today, but I’ll post about it in another post.

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